Description
The text of the Whiffenpoofs Song,
the theme song of the
Yale University Whiffenpoof Choir,
is from 1909-10.
It was a parody on one of Rudyard Kipling’s
“Barrack-Room Ballads”
entitled “Gentlemen-Rankers.”*
That text was set to music by Tod B. Galloway in 1909.
The actual text of the Whiffenpoof Song was written by
Meade Minnigerode and George S. Pomery c. 1910
and set to Galloway’s melody.
To the tables down at Mory’s
To the place where Louie dwells
To the dear old Temple bar we love so well
Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled with
their glasses raised on high
And the magic of their singing casts its spell
Yes, the magic of their singing of
the songs we love so well
“Shall I Wasting” and “Mavourneen”
and the rest
We will serenade our Louie while
life and voice shall last
Then we’ll pass and be
forgotten with the rest.
We’re poor little lambs
who have lost our way
Baa, baa, baa
We’re little black sheep
who have gone astray
Baa, baa, baa
Gentleman songsters
off on a spree
Doomed from here
to eternity
Lord have mercy on
such as we
Baa, baa, baa.
*(Kipling’s orignal poem begins:
To the legion of the lost ones,
to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in
their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England
cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress,
if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the forces
who has run his own six horses,
And faith he went the pace
and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin
while he held the ready tin,
But to-day the Sergeant’s
something less than kind.
We’re poor little lambs
who’ve lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We’re little black sheep
who’ve gone astray,
Baa—aa—aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!)